Breath analysis for measuring chemical components or analytes in the breath offers important potential benefits over other alternative methods of analyte measurement, e.g., such as blood- or urine-based measurement. Such benefits include ease of use and patient or user compliance, particularly for home or other non-clinical use. Gaining patient compliance is generally far easier when the requirement is to exhale into a device, rather than drawing blood or obtaining a urine sample. Ease of handling the samples also is enhanced.
Hand-held or otherwise portable breath analysis devices afford the potential for even greater advantages. Such portability presents opportunities for extra-clinical applications, e.g., at home, office, gym, weight loss facility, and the like, and by the patient or user himself or herself, rather than by a trained clinician or technician. Portable breath sensing systems offer the potential for comfortable and more natural sampling to increase user adherence to a desired sampling schedule.
Although approximately 300 analytes have been identified in human breath, acetone is an important analyte that is particularly promising for practical and beneficial application. Acetone has been correlated with fat metabolism, which in turn is involved in physiological and pathophysiological phenomena ranging from weight loss to metabolic disorders. Measurement of breath acetone at levels or concentration ranges of interest, for example, can enable one to gain useful information about such factors as patient or user weight loss, and about such pathological states as diabetes mellitus, metabolic syndrome, and metabolic or ketoacidosis.